What's the point of religion when we have education now?

[Pedro de San Patricio]

I don't have any idea why Americans call French frogs and Germans krauts and so on - whatever. You are not able to see your world with the eyes of a stranger.

Do we? I thought I was using a historical pejorative in a jocular fashion. Apparently that particular nickname was assigned by the English around the time of the French Revolution. Kraut is from WWII. Yank and seppo for Americans has been along for I have no idea how long.

How can be the word for [one of] the most beautiful things on earth be used in such a perverted way how the english language is doing it? Sure everyone will accept this after a while - the bad side of fitness - but this is nothing what I can do. I will always be a stranger in the english speaking world - and the more the english speaking world is conquering my country the more I will be a be a stranger in my own country. On the other side it's a lot of fun to hear someone say something like "fucking Fleischwurstfachverkäuferin".

What exactly brought up your obsession with this particular word?

Nevertheless there seems to be an open question in your soul - or a kind of yearning. Maybe it's the yearning to find a diamond of truth. There are lots of diamonds only 50 miles under your feet but I don't know how deep the truth lies under your feet.

Nah, I'm good. Religion really isn't a required thing, and I've wasted faaar too many years of my young life learning about it as is.

But you don't know why. Perfect. God is with you. On the other side I'm asking myselve: "Is somone able to hold a good position in a storm without a good evaluated structure in- and outside"? Who has right to decide who has the right to live and who has the duty to dy?

We do not have the right to decide who lives or dies. This is why I'm so utterly against feticide, infanticide, murder, and animal abuse. It's the reason for my pacificism (which is essentially a middle ground between defensivism and pacifism).It's the reason for my campaign against capital punishment and for a strong welfare system. It's the reason my single biggest problem with PETA is how hypocritical they are in killing animals themselves and supporting terrorist organizations. I could go on. People call me an extremist in this regard and I'm quite honestly unfazed by that. It is a moral imperative to be extreme in your refusal to torture and slaughter other living things. Life doesn't need any god to give it this value. It has it by virtue of itself. A sentient creature has the right not to be harmed because of the very fact of its sentience. It goes even further with humans, whom I hold to be one literal family through common descent. If we were to trace our entire ancestry then we would discover the exact same people in our family tree at some point down the line.

More easy: A Christian believes in god not in gods. That's a completly different thing. I don't know why it is so difficult for you to undertand this. We are the children the evolution as well as we are the children of the spirit of god. God is the source for all forms of spirit - he is the spirit - but he is not the ruler of every form of spirit. You are doing your own decisions - you are free. The problem is maybe the distance. You need more distance. This could be difficult to realize in some cases. In our church we have places to come more near to god - with more distance to the world. Our experience is we have to do something to come to god. So maybe to do nothing is a way for a greater distance - but I fear this is wrong too. A man who is able to do really nothing needs and owns an astonishing great spiritual power and trust in god. I fear the only way to be separated from god are sins, crimes, brutality, murder and so on. Not a good idea to go this way.

A Catholic Christian believes in a god they commonly call God which is composed of three gods unified into one god. I do understand that, at least intellectually. I simply reject it as clearly false. Many of the reasons for this have been laid out in this thread. The Bible may contain some good stories here and there but it's still largely fiction. The lynchpin stories an interpretation of it as factual would require to be true just... aren't. There's no way around that. There were no Adam and Eve so there was no Fall. No Atonement would be necessary without that Fall. No Atonement being necessary means that Jesus didn't have to die. The Messiah is a mythological character with a concrete list of qualifications that Jesus did not meet. The enslavement in Egypt never happened so there could not have been an Exodus. No Exodus means no revelations at Mount Sinai, no Promised Land, and no conquest of Canaan by Joshua. I could go on.

Moral and lack of moral seems to be very important in the english speaking world. I saw murderers of members of my family live a long happy well respected life. So I decided one day moral is a completly superflous thing. Indeed no one is able to live without justice - but to hope to find justice in this world here destroys only the own life.

There is no justice possible except in this life. Murderers stop existing as personalities upon death just like their victims.

"humanity"? Should the right expression not be be "human race" in this case? Whatever. My wife said one day to me: "Blood is not thicker than water" - and I knew immediatelly what she was speaking about. It's one of the sentences I love most: "Blood is not thicker than water". You see: My logic is far away from the logic of machines. "Wrong" sentences are often much more true.

No. I meant familial. As I explained above, going far enough back in our family trees would prove both of them to be merely branches of the same tree. At some point we share common descent. What that means is that on some level we are literal cousins. You are literally kin to me in some manner. This means that I have certain obligations to you. I wouldn't leave my brother or first cousin out in the cold. I would have no excuse for doing so to you. I wouldn't let my uncle go hungry if I could help it. I would have no excuse for watching you do without. I understand that you probably don't accept this and that's fine. It tends to be one of the hardest aspects of my philosophy for people to comprehend.

Side note, it also means that you and your wife are in some way related as well. Have fun with that image.

Who is interested in science if Christians are not searching for the truth and reality of god and his creation any longer? Businessmen? Politicians? Warriors? Mindmanipulators and brainwashers? Crazy money making machines? Ferengi? ...

Scientists. Scholars. The curious. Almost everyone.[/QUOTE]

 

[Muslim75]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that religion is bad or dumb. I'm just saying we've outgrown it. We don't need stories about how the Sun moves across the sky because it's sitting in a chariot. We understand how the solar system works and know that it's actually the Earth revolving around the Sun. We don't need an illiterate Neolithic tribesman's best guess that the first people were made by Sky Father. We understand evolution now. We don't need these attempts to explain why the world is the way it is when we have the real answers to many of our questions.

Isn't it time for us to accept this and move on to bigger and better things now? Isn't it time for Jews to give up their Judaism and its attendant falsified history and ethnic supremacy? Isn't it time for Christians to give up their Christianity and its worship of an executed Jewish convict as the creator of the universe? Isn't it time for Muslims to give up their Islam and its calls for a global theocratic dictatorship? We don't need these things anymore. We can let go. Will you join the rest of the human family in letting go of the past and stepping out into the light of the bright future we can build together?

There is no such thing as evolution. It is for the scientists to use more rigour in the scientific process.

Religion is the means to be re-united with our Creator (who is above any form of humanness). It is essential because we approach our Creator through His guidance (religion His way), and not through our own initiatives.

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

There is no such thing as evolution. It is for the scientists to use more rigour in the scientific process.

Religion is the means to be re-united with our Creator (who is above any form of humanness). It is essential because we approach our Creator through His guidance (religion His way), and not through our own initiatives.

Yes. Actually there is. We've seen and documented it. E. coli Long-term Experimental Evolution Project Site

 

[amrchaos]

Why is evolution brought up?

So far, it was thread based on peoples concept and practicality of religion(either specific or general)--then someone had to poison it with some scientific theory.

Evolution is not a religion--it is a scientific theory, like gravity, like Electromagnetism--a theory. A theory that talks about the diversity of life. (Abiogenesis is a work in progress--hence most of it is conjecture. Note: When scientist talks about evolution--they do not call it the "Conjecture of Evolution" nor the "Hypothesis of Evolution", they call is the Theory of Evolution because they feel confident about the facts that support it. Almost as confident as the Theory of Gravity and the Theory of Electromagnetism(note--there is no higher title of confidence for a model than "theory" in the natural sciences!)

So let us get off this attempt to introduce scientific theory as religion and head back to the topic of this thread when pertaining to real religion(s)!

 

[zaangalewa]

I don't have any idea why Americans call French frogs and Germans krauts and so on - whatever. You are not able to see your world with the eyes of a stranger.

Do we? I thought I was using a historical pejorative in a jocular fashion.

How to know without humor?

Apparently that particular nickname was assigned by the English around the time of the French Revolution. Kraut is from WWII. Yank and seppo for Americans has been along for I have no idea how long.

Seppo? Joseph? A word for Americans?

How can be the word for [one of] the most beautiful things on earth be used in such a perverted way how the english language is doing it? Sure everyone will accept this after a while - the bad side of fitness - but this is nothing what I can do. I will always be a stranger in the english speaking world - and the more the english speaking world is conquering my country the more I will be a be a stranger in my own country. On the other side it's a lot of fun to hear someone say something like "fucking Fleischwurstfachverkäuferin".

What exactly brought up your obsession with this particular word?

I'm sure one day the last German will not be unhappy to die out. It's impossible not to be confrontated with this pardox pervertism of the english language.

Nevertheless there seems to be an open question in your soul - or a kind of yearning. Maybe it's the yearning to find a diamond of truth. There are lots of diamonds only 50 miles under your feet but I don't know how deep the truth lies under your feet.

Nah, I'm good. Religion really isn't a required thing, and I've wasted faaar too many years of my young life learning about it as is.

Aha

But you don't know why. Perfect. God is with you. On the other side I'm asking myselve: "Is somone able to hold a good position in a storm without a good evaluated structure in- and outside"? Who has right to decide who has the right to live and who has the duty to dy?

We

the citizens of Atheistica, I guess.

do not have the right to decide who lives or dies. This is why I'm so utterly against feticide, infanticide, murder, and animal abuse. It's the reason for my pacificism (which is essentially a middle ground between defensivism and pacifism).It's the reason for my campaign against capital punishment and for a strong welfare system. It's the reason my single biggest problem with PETA is how hypocritical they are in killing animals themselves and supporting terrorist organizations. I could go on. People call me an extremist in this regard and I'm quite honestly unfazed by that. It is a moral imperative to be extreme in your refusal to torture and slaughter other living things. Life doesn't need any god to give it this value. It has it by virtue of itself.

Life is only a special form of dust. What calls a materialist (atheist) "virtue", why?

A sentient creature has the right not to be harmed because of the very fact of its sentience. It goes even further with humans, whom I hold to be one literal family through common descent. If we were to trace our entire ancestry then we would discover the exact same people in our family tree at some point down the line.

Interesting opinion. I only miss the point why someone should think in this way who is an atheist.

More easy: A Christian believes in god not in gods. That's a completly different thing. I don't know why it is so difficult for you to undertand this. We are the children the evolution as well as we are the children of the spirit of god. God is the source for all forms of spirit - he is the spirit - but he is not the ruler of every form of spirit. You are doing your own decisions - you are free. The problem is maybe the distance. You need more distance. This could be difficult to realize in some cases. In our church we have places to come more near to god - with more distance to the world. Our experience is we have to do something to come to god. So maybe to do nothing is a way for a greater distance - but I fear this is wrong too. A man who is able to do really nothing needs and owns an astonishing great spiritual power and trust in god. I fear the only way to be separated from god are sins, crimes, brutality, murder and so on. Not a good idea to go this way.

A Catholic Christian believes in a god they commonly call God which is composed of three gods unified into one god.

Triune - not unified. To unify a unity makes not a big sense.

I do understand that, at least intellectually. I simply reject it as clearly false.

Clearly what? You are just simple not a Christian - why should you believe in the triune god? Would be crazy.

Many of the reasons for this have been laid out in this thread. The Bible may contain some good stories here and there but it's still largely fiction. The lynchpin stories an interpretation of it as factual would require to be true just... aren't. There's no way around that. There were no Adam and Eve so there was no Fall. No Atonement would be necessary without that Fall. No Atonement being necessary means that Jesus didn't have to die. The Messiah is a mythological character with a concrete list of qualifications that Jesus did not meet. The enslavement in Egypt never happened so there could not have been an Exodus. No Exodus means no revelations at Mount Sinai, no Promised Land, and no conquest of Canaan by Joshua. I could go on.

That's your antibelief against Christains and Jews - but what is your belief? By the way: Egypt was under the slavery of the culture of death - everything there had to do with death - the exodus is a way from death into life. And this is still our direction today.

Moral and lack of moral seems to be very important in the english speaking world. I saw murderers of members of my family live a long happy well respected life. So I decided one day moral is a completly superflous thing. Indeed no one is able to live without justice - but to hope to find justice in this world here destroys only the own life.

There is no justice possible except in this life. Murderers stop existing as personalities upon death just like their victims.

If god decides it this way - why not? I don't live in fear not to exist after my death. But I don't believe this.

"humanity"? Should the right expression not be be "human race" in this case? Whatever. My wife said one day to me: "Blood is not thicker than water" - and I knew immediatelly what she was speaking about. It's one of the sentences I love most: "Blood is not thicker than water". You see: My logic is far away from the logic of machines. "Wrong" sentences are often much more true.

No. I meant familial. As I explained above, going far enough back in our family trees would prove both of them to be merely branches of the same tree. At some point we share common descent.

Hi, bro

What that means is that on some level we are literal cousins. You are literally kin to me in some manner. This means that I have certain obligations to you.

What? Forget it.

I wouldn't leave my brother or first cousin out in the cold. I would have no excuse for doing so to you. I wouldn't let my uncle go hungry if I could help it. I would have no excuse for watching you do without. I understand that you probably don't accept this and that's fine. It tends to be one of the hardest aspects of my philosophy for people to comprehend.

Side note, it also means that you and your wife are in some way related as well. Have fun with that image.

I'm a German. I have always fun - with every form of image. And I know from childrenw who indirectly killed their parents only because of some political indoctrinations.

Who is interested in science if Christians are not searching for the truth and reality of god and his creation any longer? Businessmen? Politicians? Warriors? Mindmanipulators and brainwashers? Crazy money making machines? Ferengi? ...

Scientists. Scholars. The curious. Almost everyone.

God might hear your prayer. Hopefully I never will live in a world without Christians.

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

How to know without humor?

Admittedly it can be hard for people to tell sometimes.

Seppo? Joseph? A word for Americans?

The Racial Slur Database has more if you don't like those. Take your pick.

I'm sure one day the last German will not be unhappy to die out. It's impossible not to be confrontated with this pardox pervertism of the english language.

I just don't understand why you started talking about how weird it is that English has the word "fuck". I suppose I could just as easily ask why German uses Scheiße when there are other terms. It wouldn't be any more on topic though.

Aha

What's "aha" about being familiar with various religious beliefs? I grew up in the southeastern US. Of course I knew enough to reject Protestant Christianity around the same time I first learned to read.

the citizens of Atheistica, I guess.

There is no place. We as humans.

Life is only a special form of dust. What calls a materialist (atheist) "virtue", why?

Life is not dust. Our bodies are made of matter. Dust is also made of matter. Our bodies are not made of dust. "By virtue of" is an English idiom basically meaning "because of". by virtue of - Idioms by The Free Dictionary

Interesting opinion. I only miss the point why someone should think in this way who is an atheist.

It's the logical conclusion of the current model of human origins. If we started as a few small bands of primates in Africa and are currently billions all around the planet then obviously there was quite a bit of intermarriage. Genetics bears this out. Any given human population has mixed ancestry from other human populations and often even traces of ancestry from other members of the genus homo.

Triune - not unified. To unify a unity makes not a big sense.

Your triune god still basically comes down to three different persons actually being one person while remaining distinct. That's what doesn't make sense.

That's your antibelief against Christains and Jews - but what is your belief? By the way: Egypt was under the slavery of the culture of death - everything there had to do with death - the exodus is a way from death into life. And this is still our direction today.

My belief is rooted in fact. The Hebrew tribes were indigenous to Canaan. Egyptians never owned Hebrew slaves in large numbers. The Hebrew tribal deity YHWH is the monotheistic version of a Canaanite god of war and storms who was the son of El and Asherah and the brother of Ba'al and a few others.

What? Forget it.

I'm unsure how that doesn't make sense. If I accept the best supported science then I have to accept that we share common descent. If this is so, then we are related. Relation is kinship. This would make us kinsmen. If I have a moral obligation to ensure the well being of my immediate family then I see no reason there would not also be an obligation to more distant family.

 

[zaangalewa]

How to know without humor?

Admittedly it can be hard for people to tell sometimes.

Seppo? Joseph? A word for Americans?

The Racial Slur Database has more if you don't like those. Take your pick.

I'm sure one day the last German will not be unhappy to die out. It's impossible not to be confrontated with this pardox pervertism of the english language.

I just don't understand why you started talking about how weird it is that English has the word "fuck". I suppose I could just as easily ask why German uses Scheiße when there are other terms. It wouldn't be any more on topic though.

Aha

What's "aha" about being familiar with various religious beliefs? I grew up in the southeastern US. Of course I knew enough to reject Protestant Christianity around the same time I first learned to read.

the citizens of Atheistica, I guess.

There is no place. We as humans.

Life is only a special form of dust. What calls a materialist (atheist) "virtue", why?

Life is not dust. Our bodies are made of matter. Dust is also made of matter. Our bodies are not made of dust. "By virtue of" is an English idiom basically meaning "because of". by virtue of - Idioms by The Free Dictionary
7

Interesting opinion. I only miss the point why someone should think in this way who is an atheist.

It's the logical conclusion of the current model of human origins. If we started as a few small bands of primates in Africa and are currently billions all around the planet then obviously there was quite a bit of intermarriage. Genetics bears this out. Any given human population has mixed ancestry from other human populations and often even traces of ancestry from other members of the genus homo.

Triune - not unified. To unify a unity makes not a big sense.

Your triune god still basically comes down to three different persons actually being one person while remaining distinct. That's what doesn't make sense.

That's your antibelief against Christains and Jews - but what is your belief? By the way: Egypt was under the slavery of the culture of death - everything there had to do with death - the exodus is a way from death into life. And this is still our direction today.

My belief is rooted in fact. The Hebrew tribes were indigenous to Canaan. Egyptians never owned Hebrew slaves in large numbers. The Hebrew tribal deity YHWH is the monotheistic version of a Canaanite god of war and storms who was the son of El and Asherah and the brother of Ba'al and a few others.

What? Forget it.

I'm unsure how that doesn't make sense. If I accept the best supported science then I have to accept that we share common descent. If this is so, then we are related. Relation is kinship. This would make us kinsmen. If I have a moral obligation to ensure the well being of my immediate family then I see no reason there would not also be an obligation to more distant family.

I guess you are lonesome. No wonder if you explain others what their belief is and why they are idiots if they speak with you.

 

[zaangalewa]

... I just don't understand why you started talking about how weird it is that English has the word "fuck". I suppose I could just as easily ask why German uses Scheiße when there are other terms. It wouldn't be any more on topic though.

Step in (bull-)shit and you know why it's an expression for "something goes suddenly wrong and has very bad consequences".

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

I guess you are lonesome. No wonder if you explain others what their belief is and why they are idiots if they speak with you.

That's a strange conclusion to jump to. I'll actually be seeing my family in a couple of days.

 

[zaangalewa]

...

Life is only a special form of dust. What calls a materialist (atheist) "virtue", why?

Life is not dust. Our bodies are made of matter. Dust is also made of matter. Our bodies are not made of dust. "By virtue of" is an English idiom basically meaning "because of". by virtue of - Idioms by The Free Dictionary

Dust is stardust - a poetic expression for matter - and take the word "value" instead of virtue.

...

Triune - not unified. To unify a unity makes not a big sense.

Your triune god still basically comes down to three different persons actually being one person while remaining distinct. That's what doesn't make sense.

You have a problem with the word "triune"? Easy example for a triune structure: Take a cup of tea - drink - and clean the cup. The cup will move forward-backward, up-down, left-right and will never leave the space during this very complex procedure. The space itselve is for example triune. You are using this structure since you are here on this planet. And please: I said not god is space - I gave you only an example for a triune structure what's a little more easy understandable. Quarks for example have also a triune structure and I'm sure there are more examples. Colors for example are combinations of red-green-blue and so on and so on.

 

[zaangalewa]

I guess you are lonesome. No wonder if you explain others what their belief is and why they are idiots if they speak with you.

That's a strange conclusion to jump to. I'll actually be seeing my family in a couple of days.

Hopefully.

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

 

[zaangalewa]

Es geschehen merkwürdige Dinge während der Hirnumbauphase Jugendlicher. Whatever. If one of our girls kicked you out of a window and that's why you hate Catholics now she was not wrong to do so.

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

I've never dated a Catholic tho. It's just a funny song. -.-

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

"What's the point of religion when we have education now?'

The point of religion is to assuage the fear of death, a fear that can manifest regardless how well educated someone might be.

 

[zaangalewa]

I've never dated a Catholic tho. It's just a funny song. -.-

Bad quality in music, expression and text is funny? However. I'm a German. Germans don't have any form of humor.

 

[zaangalewa]

... Every human has concrete motivation to help people. It's called empathy, and is the culmination of emotion and reason that exists in every non-psychopath

So I don't doubt about that human beings are in general not non-psychopaths.

that hasn't been psychologically ruined by childhood trauma.

Whatever is bad is the fault of the parents - whatever is good is the merit of the children? I was traumatized a lot when I was a very young child. So what? It's not nice - that's all meanwhile.

Morality isn't a construct of religion,

Morality is an american Cadillac not a german paddleboat. What to do with "moral"? Moral is a protozoon if someone needs moral to avoid the own bad deeds - and moral is an elephant if moralists speak about others.

and if you think

I think I don't think. I think ich denke.

people lacking religious faith lack principles,

Principles of war for example?

it's because you either don't know many agnostics or atheists, or you're willfully dense.

If a Christian is doing something then someone can ask him "And this was a deed of love now?". But what to ask an atheist? And agnosticism is problem on its own. I am for example agnostic, that's one reason why I say I believe in god. I don't know god - I believe in him. But it's impossible to say someone is an agnostics. It's a contradiction to say "God exists and doesn't exist the same time." - this contradiction destroys the aristotelian logic, what we are normaly using in our daily lifes. If an opposit is true and the opposit of the opposit is true too then everything is always only true. So if an agnostics would really exist, he would not be able to think, although god could really exist and not exist the same time.

Take for example the categorial imperative from Immanuel Kant. This imperative is only a challenge for spritual people - for people with spirit. The egocentrist of the modern world would just simple do whatever they like to do and woud create as many pi-bills as they like to create. And this would lead to a confrontation with the reality all around including a confrontation with the natural laws. We are not able to create the world in our brains - we are only able to understand the world.

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

... Every human has concrete motivation to help people. It's called empathy, and is the culmination of emotion and reason that exists in every non-psychopath

1. So I don't doubt about that human beings are in general not non-psychopaths.

that hasn't been psychologically ruined by childhood trauma.

2. Whatever is bad is the fault of the parents - whatever is good is the merit of the children? I was traumatized a lot when I was a very young child. So what? It's not nice - that's all meanwhile.

Morality isn't a construct of religion,

3. Morality is an american Cadillac not a german paddleboat. What to do with "moral"? Moral is a protozoon if someone needs moral to avoid the own bad deeds - and moral is an elephant if moralists speak about others.

and if you think

4. I think I don't think. I think ich denke.

people lacking religious faith lack principles,

5. Principles of war for example?

it's because you either don't know many agnostics or atheists, or you're willfully dense.

6. If a Christian is doing something then someone can ask him "And this was a deed of love now?". But what to ask an atheist? And agnosticism is problem on its own. I am for example agnostic, that's one reason why I say I believe in god. I don't know god - I believe in him. But it's impossible to say someone is an agnostics. It's a contradiction to say "God exists and doesn't exist the same time." - this contradiction destroys the aristotelian logic, what we are normaly using in our daily lifes. If an opposit is true and the opposit of the opposit is true too then everything is always only true. So if an agnostics would really exist, he would not be able to think, although god could really exist and not exist the same time.

Take for example the categorial imperative from Immanuel Kant. This imperative is only a challenge for spritual people - for people with spirit. The egocentrist of the modern world would just simple do whatever they like to do and woud create as many pi-bills as they like to create. And this would lead to a confrontation with the reality all around including a confrontation with the natural laws. We are not able to create the world in our brains - we are only able to understand the world.

I'm just gonna number these so I don't have to play with the quote function and break it down.

1. "I don't doubt that human beings in general are not non psychopaths." Triple negative, took me a few seconds to unwrap that sentence and gather what you were saying. People in general -are- in fact non psychopaths. The indiscriminate lack of empathy and remorse in a psychopath that distinguish them from a typically wired human is only found, according to modern studies, in about 1 percent of our population. For most of us, intentionally causing someone else to suffer requires a strong enough negative emotional response to depersonalize/dehumanize the object of that suffering, and even then repression of remorse is far more typical than a lack thereof. That's how empathy works in the vast, vast, VAST majority of everyone you've ever encountered, religion notwithstanding.

2. You're inserting your own assumptions, here. I didn't say or even imply parental fault or childhood virtue. What I said literally had nothing to do with assigning responsibility for childhood trauma, and literally nothing to do with praising children for their potential virtue. All I was implying is that childhood trauma has the potential to vastly alter someone's emotional responses, and thus their empathetic responses. Adult trauma can do it too, but influences that occur during one's formative years are generally more compelling than those that occur later. That's why they're called "formative" years.

When you say, "so what, it's all meanwhile", I gather that you think I'm insinuating that childhood trauma excuses adult behavior. I'm not making that claim at all, I'm saying that it effects the empathy that is the -actual- source of our morals regarding how we interact with others. It had little to do with my greater point, I was simply acknowledging that not -everyone- is possessed of the typical empathetic responses.

3. What you said here isn't a contradiction to anything I've said. All this does is explain your disdain for the word, "morality".

In reality, I'm simply using the accurate English term to describe what we've both been talking about. Morality is, by definition, someone's values of right and wrong. Your contention is that without religion, people would have no concrete reason to worry about right and wrong (which is called morality). So, lemme make this easier for you to consider objectively without taking issue with my word choice: The concept of right and wrong isn't a construct of religion. Better?

4. Fun fun, but not actually relevant to our discussion. Not sure why this was its own section.

5. No, not just principles of war, but principles of right and wrong. Your response, though appropriately snide for an attempt to belittle my point without analyzing it, doesn't actually counter my position. Got any actual point with which to refute what I've said, or just unsubstantiated condescension?

6. Ask an atheist whatever you want to ask them. "Why did you do that?" seems like a pretty valid one, if you're looking for motive. I don't see how the fact that -you- would be awkward finding language by which to qualify a non-religious person's moral values proves that they don't exist. All it proves is that you have a hard time understanding how concepts of right and wrong could exist without a supernatural parent deciding what they are.

As far as your "God exists and doesn't exist at the same time" explanation of agnosticism, I've never heard this conundrum assigned to agnosticism. Not believing one way or the other doesn't mean that I believe that both are true simultaneously. It means I haven't experienced evidence that compells me to believe one way or the other with any conviction, and certainly not enough conviction to try to live my life according to anyone's explanation.

Lastly, by my understanding, Kant's categorical imperative has literally nothing to do with a human spirit. Kant's "categorical imperative" is a moral maxim that transcends conditions and is -always- logically correct. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction." His idea was about morality based -specifically- in logic and rational thought, not in the existence of a hard, spiritual standard of right and wrong. You've spun Kant to support your own view that religion is necessary for right and wrong when what he actually said about the categorical imperative didn't presuppose the existence of a spirit at all. It only necessitated the appearance of free will and a human's knack for rational thought.

Not that it matters. What a philosopher says is by no means gospel, regardless of how respected that philosopher is. If Kant -had- said that universal moral values could only be achieved by recognition of a spiritual authority, I don't care how many college professors touted his genius, I'd say he was wrong. In his defense, he never, to my knowledge, posited anything so silly.


Bottom line: If religion is required for people to understand right and wrong, why is it that religions all over the planet, throughout all historical time periods, all seem to have moral maxims that hit on the big three? Don't steal, don't lie, don't hurt others. These religions often contain stories that exclude the potential existence of the universe as presented in other religions. They are often mutually exclusive, and therefore can't all be correct. If most aren't correct, why is it that so many of these mutually exclusive explanations espouse those same three rules? IF the true God(s) only inspired one of these religions, then it must be acknowledged that these other religions were largely invented, and not inspired by the supernatural. IF humans the world over all invented the same rules about not fucking each other over, and most of them weren't actually divinely inspired, maybe we might acknowledge the possibility that there's something other than a God telling us right from wrong that inspires people to do right by each other.

 

[zaangalewa]

...
I'm just gonna number these so I don't have to play with the quote function and break it down.

1. "I don't doubt that human beings in general are not non psychopaths." Triple negative, took me a few seconds to unwrap that sentence and gather what you were saying. People in general -are- in fact non psychopaths. The indiscriminate lack of empathy and remorse in a psychopath that distinguish them from a typically wired human is only found, according to modern studies, in about 1 percent of our population. For most of us, intentionally causing someone else to suffer requires a strong enough negative emotional response to depersonalize/dehumanize the object of that suffering, and even then repression of remorse is far more typical than a lack thereof. That's how empathy works in the vast, vast, VAST majority of everyone you've ever encountered, religion notwithstanding.

2. You're inserting your own assumptions, here. I didn't say or even imply parental fault or childhood virtue. What I said literally had nothing to do with assigning responsibility for childhood trauma, and literally nothing to do with praising children for their potential virtue. All I was implying is that childhood trauma has the potential to vastly alter someone's emotional responses, and thus their empathetic responses. Adult trauma can do it too, but influences that occur during one's formative years are generally more compelling than those that occur later. That's why they're called "formative" years.

When you say, "so what, it's all meanwhile", I gather that you think I'm insinuating that childhood trauma excuses adult behavior. I'm not making that claim at all, I'm saying that it effects the empathy that is the -actual- source of our morals regarding how we interact with others. It had little to do with my greater point, I was simply acknowledging that not -everyone- is possessed of the typical empathetic responses.

3. What you said here isn't a contradiction to anything I've said. All this does is explain your disdain for the word, "morality".

In reality, I'm simply using the accurate English term to describe what we've both been talking about. Morality is, by definition, someone's values of right and wrong. Your contention is that without religion, people would have no concrete reason to worry about right and wrong (which is called morality). So, lemme make this easier for you to consider objectively without taking issue with my word choice: The concept of right and wrong isn't a construct of religion. Better?

4. Fun fun, but not actually relevant to our discussion. Not sure why this was its own section.

5. No, not just principles of war, but principles of right and wrong. Your response, though appropriately snide for an attempt to belittle my point without analyzing it, doesn't actually counter my position. Got any actual point with which to refute what I've said, or just unsubstantiated condescension?

6. Ask an atheist whatever you want to ask them. "Why did you do that?" seems like a pretty valid one, if you're looking for motive. I don't see how the fact that -you- would be awkward finding language by which to qualify a non-religious person's moral values proves that they don't exist. All it proves is that you have a hard time understanding how concepts of right and wrong could exist without a supernatural parent deciding what they are.

As far as your "God exists and doesn't exist at the same time" explanation of agnosticism, I've never heard this conundrum assigned to agnosticism. Not believing one way or the other doesn't mean that I believe that both are true simultaneously. It means I haven't experienced evidence that compells me to believe one way or the other with any conviction, and certainly not enough conviction to try to live my life according to anyone's explanation.

Lastly, by my understanding, Kant's categorical imperative has literally nothing to do with a human spirit. Kant's "categorical imperative" is a moral maxim that transcends conditions and is -always- logically correct. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction." His idea was about morality based -specifically- in logic and rational thought, not in the existence of a hard, spiritual standard of right and wrong. You've spun Kant to support your own view that religion is necessary for right and wrong when what he actually said about the categorical imperative didn't presuppose the existence of a spirit at all. It only necessitated the appearance of free will and a human's knack for rational thought.

Not that it matters. What a philosopher says is by no means gospel, regardless of how respected that philosopher is. If Kant -had- said that universal moral values could only be achieved by recognition of a spiritual authority, I don't care how many college professors touted his genius, I'd say he was wrong. In his defense, he never, to my knowledge, posited anything so silly.


Bottom line: If religion is required for people to understand right and wrong, why is it that religions all over the planet, throughout all historical time periods, all seem to have moral maxims that hit on the big three? Don't steal, don't lie, don't hurt others. These religions often contain stories that exclude the potential existence of the universe as presented in other religions. They are often mutually exclusive, and therefore can't all be correct. If most aren't correct, why is it that so many of these mutually exclusive explanations espouse those same three rules? IF the true God(s) only inspired one of these religions, then it must be acknowledged that these other religions were largely invented, and not inspired by the supernatural. IF humans the world over all invented the same rules about not fucking each other over, and most of them weren't actually divinely inspired, maybe we might acknowledge the possibility that there's something other than a God telling us right from wrong that inspires people to do right by each other.

Do you expect an answer? I guess you know very well, where you ignored what I said so you are able to repeat what you always thought. I don't have any problem if you live without the spirit of Immanuel Kant - I can also live with people who are falsly thinking agnosticism is a position in a spectrum between atheism and the belief in god. Besides: right and wrong and/or moral are not very interesting themes for me. Sure we need justice - but we are not able to find justice in wars of words or in the letters of the laws. I'm convinced without his Holy Spirit everyone is lost. Believe it or not - that's not my problem. I wish you a good day.

 

[Darkwind]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that religion is bad or dumb. I'm just saying we've outgrown it. We don't need stories about how the Sun moves across the sky because it's sitting in a chariot. We understand how the solar system works and know that it's actually the Earth revolving around the Sun. We don't need an illiterate Neolithic tribesman's best guess that the first people were made by Sky Father. We understand evolution now. We don't need these attempts to explain why the world is the way it is when we have the real answers to many of our questions.

Isn't it time for us to accept this and move on to bigger and better things now? Isn't it time for Jews to give up their Judaism and its attendant falsified history and ethnic supremacy? Isn't it time for Christians to give up their Christianity and its worship of an executed Jewish convict as the creator of the universe? Isn't it time for Muslims to give up their Islam and its calls for a global theocratic dictatorship? We don't need these things anymore. We can let go. Will you join the rest of the human family in letting go of the past and stepping out into the light of the bright future we can build together?

The fact that you characterize religion today as tell stories of a chariot of fire moving across the heavens proves that we don't have education today.